In this Issue

	About Us
	Bangalore Tales
	The Beginnings
	Bangalore Buzz
	Bangalore Beat
	Q & A
	Ask a Question

About Us

Bangalore Breeze is a collection of personal experiences of expats. KC Comal is our expat ‘reporter from the field’.

About KC Comal

Attack of the strangler fig!!! Seen on the Bangalore Walks outing.

Bangalore Tales

Like Germaine Greer I have bad timing. Steve Irvin had been on my mind a lot lately, and it was a little disconcerting to find him dominating everyone’s conversation after his unfortunate but bizarre demise. The thing is, I had found myself comparing our move to India to Irvin’s straightforward aw crikey approach to the great outdoors. There are only two options, I think, to handling the overwhelming assault India makes on all your senses. The first is to grin and bear it, dealing with issues as they come up and biding your time until you go home. The other is to, like Steve, plunge recklessly, but delightedly, into the adventures and experiences that living in India entails. Although in light of recent events this is a terrible analogy, I invite you to join my family and me as we revel in our two-year stay in Bangalore. Share our experiences of our move here, from our first impressions, to our day-to-day life as we settle down. With this newsletter, I hope to not only give you some vignettes into life abroad, but also perhaps answer some questions about moving to India. Welcome to our Bangalore tales.
— KC

Bangalore Beat

We are a family of fresh air fiends. In California the kids were outdoors for all but the unavoidable parts of their day. So the search for outdoor activities to do with kids in Bangalore has become something of a crusade for me. This Saturday we booked ourselves on Bangalore Walks, choosing an option that would introduce us to Lal Bagh and its trees, ending with breakfast at a Bangalore legend, MTR.

click to read all the details and have a great outdoor experience.

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Bangalore Buzz

Buzz is probably the right word for this edition’s report on Bangalore places and events. Only a fellow coffee addict is going to see the relevance and importance of finding a place with a good brew but hey, the world is a better place when we have had our morning joe.

Confession: I am a coffee snob. Starbucks is my idea of slumming it in the coffee world, and many an earnest conversation has been held in my kitchen over the pros and cons of various brews. So replicating my coffee was an essential part of the settling down process. On the one hand Mysore coffee is legendary, on the other, all I wanted in the morning was my latte, not the strong traditional Indian filter coffee that makes hair grow on even the downiest chest.

Domestic tension mounted as neither the spouse nor I could recall packing paper filters. Not available in Bangalore for love or money. Things were starting to look grim. Meanwhile I hit the streets. Startled baristas agreed to show me their beans and watched with some alarm as I sniffed at the various roasts. Kalmane coffees, a locally owned chain, from an estate that dates to 1879, was the most promising. If nothing else worked, they did stock and sell Columbian at about Rupees 1000 a kilogram. Hmmm, that worked out to about $25.00 for two pounds, which made it at $12.00 a pound, about the same as what we paid in California. There was a viable option.

Meanwhile the coffee maker arrived with our container, and phew! It came with a permanent filter. With a spring in my step I returned to my neighborhood Kalmane’s. Their Monsoon Nuggets is a brew with a past. In the 1880s when beans were exported to Europe by ship, they got moisture laden and swollen resulting in a distinctive flavor that took the coffee world by storm. Of course, it had to be tried, redolent of the days of mighty steamers and P&O lines. Never did a pot take so long to brew. Milk on the ready, we waited nervously, critically assessing the color and aroma. A tentative sip, and relief palpable filled the air. The lark’s on the wing, the snail is on the thorn, my brew tastes right and all’s right with the world!

Kalmane coffee shops can be found in Garuda Mall, Forum Mall, Gandhibazar, Jayanagar 4th block, Banashankari and RT Nagar. The salesmen are friendly and helpful.